


Broken Fractals

by kihophoric



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Jooheon Bingo, M/M, assistant jooheon, illusionist wonho, magic shows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-13 09:08:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihophoric/pseuds/kihophoric
Summary: “I do not do magic.”Wonho’s first words directed to him cut through Jooheon’s heart like a butcher’s knife, ripping his reality in two. The wizard raised a brow at the fallen face, scorn flashing through his khol-lined eyes.“Shake out of your dream, boy, lest I find myself out of an assistant.”(Or, a wonheon magician AU)





	Broken Fractals

**Author's Note:**

> for the "illusionist" square of the unique AUs jooheon bingo

Jooheon heard whispered tales of the wizard.

“To believe in magic is a fool’s folly,” the braver villagers would scorn at the traveling gossip that reached the kingdom’s outskirts. “Only the rich are privileged enough to be so careless.”

But not a soul dared deny of its existence after bearing witness in person. For three summers, the nobles had proclaimed they had seen the most magical show on earth, led by none other than the great wizard, himself.

Master Wonho was the talk of the land.

Jooheon listened enraptured, his calloused feet and dirt-filled nails knowing full well not a lifetime of his meager savings could provide him entry into the theatre’s hallowed canopy.

He hung onto every word of the tales. Collected them as if they were the precious drops of dew from the harvested tea leaves. Captured every thought, every description, and wove an intricate canvas in his mind as best as he could.

If he could not see the wizard in person, his imagination would suffice.

When then came rumors that the wizard was searching for a new assistant, Jooheon immediately fell to his knees in prayer.

 

 

 

With no more than a pocketful of dried persimmon, impatient feet found themselves in front of the massive tent, tethered to the ground with rope and stakes digging into the cracked dirt.

A crowd had gathered. From the bakers to the blacksmiths, from the farmers to the potters, not a class below the royal lineage was spared from the opening position's temptation. Each were eager to steal a peek through the tent’s entrance.

An unnatural chill from within billowed the canopy curtain open. The crowd shushed in awe.

Moments later, a tall, broad figure emerged. Adorning him was a humble satin tunic and yet he carried himself with the poise and fluidity of a swan. When he spoke, it was brief.

“The one with the wizard’s pendant, follow me.”

Commotion as the crowd erupted in proclamations that it was they who had the pendant, and that this, this item in their midst, was the one.

Dejected and wishing he had brought more than his snack, Jooheon stuck his hands in his pocket. His eyes widened as his hand brushed against cold metal.

Furrowing his brows, fingers carefully wrapped around the circular contraption. The man from the canopy met Jooheon’s stare, the former’s eyes becoming imperceptically softer.

Jooheon stepped forward. In full view on the palm on his hand was a silver compass, catching the setting sun's final rays with a glint. If he had looked closely, he would’ve seen a single persimmon fruit engraved on its back.

The protests grew, enraged and physical.

“Will you question my master’s choice?”

The man’s voice remained soft, while a teasing smile challenged the crowd. They hushed instantly. Even the most daft of the lot understood the veiled threat. The man held the entry’s canvas to the side and nodded once at Jooheon.

And with that, Jooheon entered his dreams.

  


The moments up until the evening’s attraction were a sensory overload.

Jooheon quickened his pace down the circular corridor behind Hyunwoo, the chief of the assistants who had brought him inside.

As he walked, he was hit with a cacophony of colors, smells, and sounds. Before him stood a second entryway into the theatre, closed off by a tapestry woven with the finest of silks. Two tigers were at fierce battle, painted in reds and blues and golds. Flanked on each side and continuing to run the perimeter of the wall stood vases holding exotic flowers, giving a sweet scent to the air. An orchestra tuned their instruments from the inside.

Someone suddenly bumped into Jooheon with a grunt.

Other assistants scurried past him, preoccupied as they set up the evening’s show. Aside from the central amphitheatre, the enclosure was marked off by several smaller rooms lining its circumference, shut off from the general public. Jooheon glanced into each as Hyunwoo quietly murmured their use. Rooms full of knick knacks, mechanical contraptions, various sized boxes and trickster mirrors. Along the far end of the tent were open roof courtyards, the kitchens, and sleeping quarters. Two large chambers were shared by the workers, and a third, the wizard’s own.

Before he was to enter the central dome, Jooheon's sun-beaten clothes were replaced by a simple, clean tunic.

Some workers retired to their chambers prior to the show, exhausted from the long day. A handful made their way into the stage’s adjoining room to be on call. The remaining few quietly shuffled up a stairway off the side of the tent.

When he stepped into the theatre, Jooheon found himself on a balcony on the far end from the stage.

The energy of the audience was absolutely electric. Moving shadows were cast on their animated faces by the grandiose hanging candle-lit chandelier from above. Each noble was decked in the best money had to offer. Precious metals adorned their arms and necks, reflections transforming them into lightning bugs dancing on the wine-stained walls.

The nobles were weighted with their social standing, but anticipation of the attraction lifted them off their feet.

Jooheon shifted his weight, rocking to the beat of his heart.

With a sudden gust, the candles adorning the walls flickered off one by one. As they extinguished, they stole the voices with them, until all that remained was pin-drop silence. On stage, the curtains opened with a flourish.

It was time.

Out stepped a figure robed in all the splendor of the seven lands.

His lustrous silk cape swept the floor behind him as he stepped forward into view, shimmering with the colors of a hummingbird. His jewels were few but selected with the utmost care, a single turquoise ring and a staff bejeweled with the most vibrant of stones. Light appeared to emanate from his pale skin, glowing a faint blue hue. He carried himself with the regality of a lion, sustained, composed, resplendent.

Jooheon grew lightheaded before he remembered to inhale.

The evening’s show was nothing short of majestic. Attraction after attraction awed the spectators, from extravagant flying illusions to disappearing acts to firey enchantments, all backed by a live orchestra sustaining the mood. A few acts were supported by the wizard’s assistants, while others required extensive props, and still others were simple enough for the lone wizard to take on.

Not a moment was spared where Jooheon wished blinking was not a necessity.

In between each act, workers quickly cleared away the previous debris and prepared the next stage in muted lighting before relighting the candles once again.

The wizard, himself, was a magnet to every pair of eyes in the dome. With often barely a word uttered, he held the tight leash of attention. Delicate movements were executed with precision. His presence dwarfed the stage, making each member of the audience feel as if he was performing for only them.

For his grand finale, the wizard made himself apparate. Within a moment’s blink, he moved from within an enclosed box on stage to a hanging contraption of silken rope lowered from the central chandelier. It was an impossible feat by every measure. And yet, the wizard did so with nothing more than a cloud of smoke.

The audience rose to their feet in rancorous applause.

Not the richest canvas Jooheon had woven could have compared to the evening’s splendor.

 

 

 

He stepped out of the theatre, knees still wobbly from the energy spent. When he was told that his new master wanted to see him, he nearly collapsed.

Hyunwoo took him around the perimeter of the inner tent until they reached the stage’s exit. There, the two waited. The silence in the corridor was a relief from the drumming in Jooheon’s ears.

The wizard stepped out, stopping as he met eyes with the party of two.

Now on the same plane as him, Jooheon found the other to be wider framed, although no taller than himself. But the wizard’s gravity took over the entire corridor, stealing the very air from Jooheon’s lungs.

Jooheon prepared himself for the right words to say. That he was forever indebted for this opportunity, that a million lifetimes couldn’t be enough to express his gratitude, that the wizard’s magic was his religion -

“I do not do _magic_.”

Wonho’s first words directed to him cut through Jooheon’s heart like a butcher’s knife, ripping his reality in two. The wizard raised a brow at the fallen face, scorn flashing through his khol-lined eyes.

“Shake out of your dream, boy, lest I find myself out of an assistant.”

Jooheon vehemently shook his head and bowed again and kept his head low, afraid to utter any more to the wizard.

Wonho revealed a snort at Jooheon’s sudden meekness. He raised an arm to gesture at their surroundings.

“Toil and dedication to the craft of illusion. Those are the pillars to our show’s success.” He landed his gaze at Hyunwoo standing a ways behind Jooheon. “Seek that knowledge from your peers. They have sacrificed many a moon to polish their skills to perfection.”

Had Jooheon kept his eyes up, he would have seen a fleeting softness, something akin to humanity, traverse the wizard’s face. His tone remained contemptuous as he finished his parting with the new assistant.

“And so, I shan't have you write off our work with your meaningless talks of make-believe.”

With that, the master spun on his heels and disappeared into his private chamber.

Hyunwoo casted a sideways glance at a silent tear-stricken face before speaking.

“Your lessons begin tomorrow at dawn.”

Jooheon watched his receding steps down the corridor as he tightly clutched onto the compass. When he opened his fist, a persimmon neatly marked the center of his palm.

 

 

A tiny but fierce meowing woke up Jooheon the next morning. He lifted his head from his pillow, groggy with sleep.

In front of him he found a pitch black kitten stubbornly staking claim on his chest.

Jooheon blinked.

The kitten was quickly scooped up by a figure who had just then ran into the chambers and towards his bed. Jooheon followed the movement and saw no other than the wizard in sleeping garments, tousled hair and all.

Jooheon shot out of bed in alarm. He must have still been dreaming. At Jooheon’s attempts to slap himself awake, the wizard’s reaction shocked the former to a halt.

The wizard _giggled_.

Without restraint, unabashedly, a twinkle of playful mischief dancing about his eyes.

Only then, did Jooheon realize the remaining workers were completely unbothered by the wizard’s presence. He glanced around to see only few sitting up to fondly smile in his direction. The remaining stayed in their beds, hardly batting an eye at the sight.

The wizard was now near the chamber entrance. There, he paused to look back at Jooheon, gently stroking the kitten. He scrunched up his nose with a grin, as if he were humored by a shared secret between only the two of them.

Then, as silently as he entered, he was gone.

 

Jooheon tried his very best to concentrate on Hyunwoo’s words.

The two stood within one of the rooms dedicated to bookkeeping, with Hyunwoo going over the relevant specifics for the new assistant.

The venue held shows thrice every fortnight, with the time in between allowing for them to prepare for the next showing. In addition to act-specific items to replenish and repair, purchases must be made to maintain the workers’ livelihoods. Perishables for sustenance, along with the basic necessities of clothing and medicine, were regularly ordered through the tickets’ profits.

Jooheon was to oversee a subset of these procurements, along with other tasks to alleviate some of Hyunwoo’s duties.

As the sun reached its peak, Jooheon had all but forgotten his run-in with the wizard. What with the sheer amount of information he was exposed to that day, his thoughts were inundated with everything but that questioning visage he had noticed earlier. Perhaps he had been dreaming, after all.

Hyunwoo made his temporary leave after supplying Jooheon the task of familiarizing himself with inventory. It wasn’t until the hairs on his neck stood up that Jooheon was reminded of that morning’s similar, out-of-place presence.

He turned around to see a more richly-clad Wonho leaning against the door frame, his arms loosely clasped across his chest. The wizard’s gaze was calm, steady, expectant. And after a second’s pause, Jooheon returned the favor with an equally driven stare. If the day had taught him anything, it was that his proposed reactions were overdone and outside the norm.

“Dropped the formalities already, have we?”

The wizard frowned at the uncharacteristically bold look the assistant was giving him. Jooheon straightened, confused at the contrast from his last meeting. He immediately lowered his head and remained at a bow.

A whiff of forbidden luxury wafed towards him before he saw intricately stitched shoes embedded with gemstones coming into his peripherals. The wizard lifted Jooheon’s chin with a finger, and Jooheon followed passing curiosity across the porcelain face.

When he opened his mouth, the edge was back. The wizard had unraveled him with a sweeping glance.

“Arrogance is not a pretty look on you, boy.”

Jooheon’s stomach churned in response. The familiar weight of shame had returned as he silently chastised himself. But despite that, he couldn’t help but to feel angry, growing from the unfairness of it all.

How was he to give a suitable reaction to the wizard, when the latter so clearly had changing expectations?

 

 

 

Later, Jooheon raised his question to an infuriatingly simple answer.

“Our masters are two.”

Hyunwoo spoke with a smile, knowing full well Jooheon’s curiosity was only piqued by his words, before continuing on with the lesson at hand.

 

 

 

In the days ahead, the wizard’s colors swung like a pendulum between extremes, traversing the spectrum but skipping over the intermediary notes.

The tented enclosure’s inner courtyard became the location for a game of cat and mouse one morning. As usual, the nearby workers hardly blinking an eye to what continued to be a whiplash of surprises for Jooheon.

The wizard laughed out loud with mirth as he ran from Hyunwoo. Potted plants were knocked over and clothes lines were pulled down, inciting grumbles from those cleaning up the moving storm’s destruction.

At the last minute, Wonho opted to use Jooheon as a rather impractical pillar to hide behind. He wrapped his arms around the assistant's torso, swinging him to and fro so that he remained a shield between himself and Hyunwoo.

“Master, I beg of you.” Hyunwoo’s voice was that of a tired mother exhausted from the same rehearsed tantrums of her petulant child. His unspoken pleas for help fell on Jooheon.

Jooheon obliged, quickly scrambling around to get a better hold on Wonho. But his movements turned hesitant as the reality of manhandling the wizard came to the foreground.

“Jooheon,” Hyunwoo spoke with urgency.

Hearing his name snapped him out of his reverie. The wizard’s flailing was brought to a stop at the proximity of the two assistants, the former’s face contorting in shocking betrayal.

Guiltily, Jooheon swallowed.

With each arm firmly grasped by the two men, the deadweight of a dejected Wonho was carried to the baths.

 

 

Jooheon hurried down the corridor when a familiar cool breeze swept out of the entrance to a hall of loud, heavy machinery and half-built structures. He stopped in his tracks, the errand he had been ordered vanishing from his mind.

He spotted the wizard only after some time. Dressed down and molding into the surrounding workers, Wonho investigated another's wound, what appeared to be a fresh gash on his arm.

"Take yourself to the infirmary." Jooheon heard the wizard nod after a moment. "I will take it from here."

With that, he took off his tunic with a sweeping motion and tossed it onto a nearby pole. He lied down on the floor, a grimy piece of cloth reducing friction as he rolled under a giant ventilator.

Jooheon took that moment to peruse the vicinity. As expected, the remainder of the workers carried on with their own tasks without a pause. The great wizard stepping down to a commoner's level was not to be an uncommon affair.

With soot stain streaking across his chest with a wipe of a hand, Wonho stood up into view again. Jooheon thought back to the time and energy spent on the baths earlier that morning. Such a waste.

The wizard spoke to a few nearby workers, throwing words of the mechanical world that remained shrouded from Jooheon knowledge. As the wizard's eyes jumped from person to person, they caught Jooheon's midway.

"If your hands and feet are idle, then I certainly hope your brain is moving."

His glare bore into Jooheon's head before he declared those words with a short laugh. The nearby workers looked towards Jooheon with curiosity for the first time. The wizard placed his hands on his hips before he forged on.

"Whoever choose this boy to be my assistant."

"Why, the master did, of course," Hyunwoo spoke easily, having come out of nowhere behind Jooheon.

Wonho's smirk was replaced with a scowl.

"Rhetorical."  


 

 

Jooheon eventually came to the conclusion that the wizard’s singular body held two minds.

He had recollected such people in fairytales - multiple voices taking up the same physical space. With the wizard, his two voices alternated like clockwork.

Everyday, from sunrise till midday, the mute but rebellious master would take over. A child’s innocence ruled his mind, one that provided a distracting, if not welcoming, explosion of energy throughout the canvassed corridors. The wizard could not speak. Instead, his thoughts and emotions were made well-aware through his actions. He would cry and laugh without restraint, spreading music and jolting the still air with life.

Master of the morning, the workers approached with affection. Their respect towards this wizard was intertwined with love, an urge both to follow and to protect.

The wizard would return to his private chamber sharp at the sun’s highest position in the heavens. To do so, he would often require the accompaniment and coaxing of Hyunwoo, reluctant to strip off the first personality for the second. The two would enter the wizard’s room, and exit some time later as a different duo, the transformation complete.

From midday to sunset, the master of the evening took charge. This wizard was the first that Jooheon had met - the sharp, sober, authoritative figure that kept the venture afloat with his impartial leadership. He was the face of the show, the personality that the public knew of.

Master of the evening, his energy ran a fearful cold compared to the affectionate warmth of the morning master. Nonetheless, he was revered within the tented complex. He could speak, but was rather his actions that spoke for him more often than not. For it was with his commitment to perfection that so precisely made their show the most magical on earth.

 

 

 

With Hyunwoo preoccupied that morning over a shipping emergency, the torch was passed to the new assistant to awaken the master.

Jooheon tentatively stepped into Wonho’s private chambers. A white cat brushed up against his legs, welcoming him. He cleared his throat, about to speak, when he heard a voice from under the covers.

“Hyunwoo, breakfast!”

Jooheon froze. A voice? But this was the master of the _morning_. He couldn’t speak.

“ _Hyunwoo_ ,” Wonho’s intonation rose to a whine as he dramatically flourished his blanket away from his face. When he noticed his guest’s presence, his eyes widened with glee. He quickly sat up, leaning against the backrest with a brilliant smile at a visibly distressed Jooheon.

The assistant fished for words. He had a sinking feeling he had been revealed a secret far too restricted for his standing. For as best as he knew, the reality that the morning master was not mute was not known by any other worker under the canvassed roof.

The room was filled with a low rumbling to interrupt Jooheon’s thoughts.

Wonho held his stomach with a grimace. “Hungry,” pitiful eyes looked up at Jooheon in expectation.

Jooheon nearly tripped in retreating from the room and booked it to the kitchens.

With a tray stacked to capacity with the cooks’ menu of the day, he gingerly walked back into a chamber that was now occupied by three others.

“There was no emergency,” Hyunwoo had stood near the doorway, hands clasped behind him in a defeated bow.

Wonho shrugged, woefully overplaying his disinterest. “Imagine that.” His eyes immediately lit up as he focused his attention on the aroma of breakfast wafting towards him. He stuck his arms out towards Jooheon, eagerly motioning him over.

Jooheon did not have to look at the third person in the room to recognize him. Although, by all logical accounts, the person could not have possibly existed.

Not in two places at once.

Nonetheless, his aura had become all too familiar, all too biting to be an illusion. He was afraid to look at the standing figure head-on, in disbelief and in fear, but he felt him. The feeling was akin to the winter sea breeze that preceded the ocean’s physical being, salt etched into his skin, remnants tasted on his lips.

“Oh, come off it, brother,” the wizard spoke with his mouth full, bits of food flying haphazardly as he orchestrated his point. “We would have told him eventually.”

“I do not trust the boy.”

The words were spoken without remorse, unveiled, rushed to be heard. From the corner of his eye, Jooheon noticed the other wizard’s steely glare deepen towards him. If Jooheon hadn’t known any better, he could have sworn he heard a low growl.

He darted back, taking refuge behind the head assistant by the door and holding onto his arm for dear life. Still at a shock, he glanced up at Hyunwoo, hoping for clarity.

Turning slightly to his side, Hyunwoo murmured the same words from before, as if their reality wasn’t painfully apparent by the identical apparitions before them.

“Our masters are two.”


End file.
